Kingdom Hearts 3 fans have been poring over the recent D23 trailers, and, as expected, they hide some pretty cool secrets. Amidst the talk about Monsters, Inc. and new glimpses at known worlds, here are five amazing details you may have missed.
1) Themed Menus Return: Like previous franchise titles, the style of the context menu changes depending on the world you’re in. It’s blue if you’re in the Monsters, Inc. world and full of toys in the Toy Story segments. In fact, limited transformations and special attacks like Mad Tea Cups, Hyper Hammer and Rocket Ruckus each have customized design.
2) Themed Keyblades: In addition to themed UI elements, worlds also have their own weapons. For example, the design of the Monsters, Inc. keyblade features scare canisters, a night light and a blue hard hat. While we don’t get a great look at it, the Mirage Staff in Corona matches the environment’s lush, green landscape.
3) Keyblade Transformations & Attraction Flows: Sora’s trademark weapon will be able to transform in lots of cool ways in Kingdom Hearts 3. The trailers show off a bunch of new abilities, including:
- Quick Claws: Makes a huge metal claw monster sprout from Sora’s weapon. It starts with a spin to clear out the area, then Sora leverages the claws for beefy melee power.
- A Mirage Staff finisher makes Rapunzel's tower burst from the ground for a huge area-of-effect attack.
- Hyper Hammer: This one dishes out more melee power with an electric twist.
- Mad Tea Cups: The cups spin around a wide area.
- Rocket Ruckus: This ability appears to be unique to a boss fight in the Toy Story world. Interact with a nearby rocket, hold on tight and shoot the projectile back at your enemy.
- Twin Yo-Yos: These may be an evolution of the Quick Claws transformation. It starts with a large blast, transitions to a huge area-of-effect attack, then offers ranged attacks with a massive chomping finisher.
4) Summons Are Actually Called Links: The Ariel and Dream Eater Summons feature prominently in the new footage, but we now know they aren’t actually called Summons in Kingdom Hearts 3. The command deck shows Sora accessing the Link ability to trigger each Summon. This name change may be an effort to unify Summons with the various Link systems used throughout the rest of Kingdom Hearts.
5) Boo Has Laugh Power: Boo of Monsters, Inc. has a Laugh Power meter that fills when Sora uses his strongest keyblade transformations. Similar to the Morale meter in the Mulan world of Kingdom Hearts 2, we imagine running out of Laugh Power may mean game over. It’s a restriction designed to encourage players to use Kingdom Hearts 3’s new combat abilities in nuanced ways.
Kingdom Hearts 3 is scheduled to release on PS4 and Xbox One in 2018.
Those are all the minor details we were able to pick out from the trailers, but are there any big ones we missed? Let us know in the comments section!
